A Shade of Vampire 82 A Circle of Nine - Bella Forrest Page 0,27
the rest of us. At first sight, at least.”
“Caleb and I will stick to nighttime operations, if needed,” Rose said. “The rest of you can move freely during the day as long as you don’t overdo the interactions with the locals.”
“We’ll all be fine,” I replied. “Pretending to be Aeternae is a piece of cake compared to finding and obliterating the Darklings. I have no qualms about blending in whatsoever.”
“I wish you all good luck,” Taeral said. “You’ll need it.”
Oh, we most definitely could use all the luck we could get. If there was a goddess of fortune out there in the universe, we needed her attention. What we were about to do was extremely delicate, but also critical—not only for the safety of Derek and Sofia’s team, but also for the wellbeing of the innocent Aeternae and the Rimians and Naloreans in their service.
The Darklings had broken the universal balance between life and death, and we had to do everything in our power to restore some sense of order, whether Death was willing to accept our help or not. I, for one, was looking forward to this mission, and not just because of the rewards of its potential success.
I wanted to be close to Amane again. I missed her, and I hadn’t gotten a decent night’s sleep since she departed for Visio.
Kelara
As soon as Astoria materialized around us, I sensed all the wrongs that had occurred in this place. I took deep breaths as I looked at the marble ruins, the monoliths standing tall and quiet, scattered across the former city.
The ocean whispered from the east, the salty breeze settling on the tip of my tongue. The hazy sky felt odd and out of place, in some ways reminding me of Cruor. The Night Bringer looked at me, and I could almost understand what he was thinking, for I was thinking it too.
“It looks familiar, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“Please don’t tell me the Spirit Bender’s seal on the Unending caused this sky too,” I murmured. He shook his head.
“No. My suffering caused an entire planet to go extinct. But the color in the sky… it’s oddly familiar. There is death magic everywhere, even if it doesn’t look like it.”
The Soul Crusher, the Phantom, and the Widow Maker moved around, touching stones and abandoned chains on which death magic runes persisted, albeit black and powerless. The Morning Star stayed close to us, but I could tell she was uneasy, her gaze constantly wandering across the land.
“I thought the sky was all mazir,” I said. “A protection spell cast by Petra Visentis. Or so Seeley said, anyway, from what intel he gathered.”
“Perhaps that’s what Petra offered as an explanation for the reddish haze,” Night replied, wearing a faded smile. “It need not be the truth. That hue can only be created with death magic. It’s a spell designed to obscure whatever it covers from distant eyes. It doesn’t stop anyone from stumbling upon Visio, like Ta’Zan once did, but it probably reduces the odds of intergalactic travelers popping by in droves… It’s harder to see from afar, but not impossible, especially upon approaching it.”
“We call it a Veil,” Morning chimed in. “But it looks more like a perversion, really. It should be much thicker.”
“As for the mazir argument, how sure are we that mazir itself isn’t derived from death magic?” Soul replied, watching me intently. “After all, Petra’s a Darkling. A high priestess of mazir who just so happens to be super versed in death magic? We’d be foolish not to consider the connection.”
“Where are we getting all this intel from?” the Widow Maker asked.
I raised a hand. “I spoke to Seeley earlier. Lumi’s picking up information from the communications between GASP and Derek’s team. She might be in isolation and grieving, officially speaking, but she never got off the comms group. They don’t know she can hear everything they tell each other. They’ve got enough on this place to put together a pretty impressive binder, I guess.”
“Petra has Nethissis, though. I don’t like that,” Phantom muttered, coming closer. “I thought Death wanted the witch’s soul protected.”
“It’s not Seeley’s fault,” I said, suddenly defensive. “Petra outsmarted them.”
“Which is all the more ridiculous. A living bloodsucker trumped one of our own!” Soul scoffed. “It’s preposterous.”
“No, what’s preposterous is they’ve been doing it for four or five million years. Seeley wasn’t the first to get his ass handed to him on Visio,” I replied dryly.
Technically speaking, none of us were supposed to know